He came closer, slowly enough to give her room to retreat. “That I have had a very difficult year, and you are not helping.”
The line was so dry she laughed. Then she saw he meant it.
Taylor was in a black tuxedo, simpler than usual, tie perfect, hair trimmed shorter than she liked because it made him look too controlled. But his control had become easier to read these past months. Tonight she saw the strain under it immediately.
“You’re nervous,” she said.
He blinked. “About a gala?”
“About me being at one.”
His shoulders lowered a fraction. “Yes.”
Maya set down her lipstick. “I’m nervous too.”
He nodded. “Then we’ll be nervous in a highly coordinated way.”
At the ballroom, the first thing she noticed was that no one laughed.
Of course they still looked. People like this always looked. But looking was different from dismissal. And the women who had once treated her like a social error now came armed with admiration so polished it almost passed for sincerity.
“You look incredible.”
“What a transformation.”
“You must give me your trainer’s information.”
Maya smiled the smile she used at difficult parents and underfunded bureaucrats. Warm enough to pass. Cool enough to end things quickly. “That’s kind of you.”
Taylor stayed close without hovering. Every now and then his hand brushed her elbow or settled briefly at her back as he steered them through conversations. He introduced her not as an accessory but as if her presence mattered to the sentence. This is my wife. Maya works in community advocacy. Maya knows more about housing insecurity than anyone I’ve met. Maya will tell you if your philanthropy model is nonsense.
The first time he said that last one, she nearly choked on sparkling water.
Later, while a string quartet performed something tasteful near the stage, one of the same women from the previous gala approached, smiling with too many teeth.
“Maya,” she said. “You look wonderful. Whatever you’re doing, it’s clearly working.”
Maya felt Taylor shift beside her, ready. She touched his wrist lightly without looking at him and answered for herself.
“I’m alive,” she said pleasantly. “That tends to improve a person’s face.”
